Giants sign Santiago Casilla to minor league deal

Posted on January 21, 2010

Santiago Casilla of the Oakland Athletics pitches during the game against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park in San Francisco, California on June 10, 2007. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

 

The San Francisco Giants made a quiet move tonight that could be a real sleeper as they inked former A’s right-handed reliever Santiago Casilla to a minor league contract. Casilla had been released by the A’s on December 10th after a 2009 season in which he posted a 5.96 ERA in 48.3 relief innings. Casilla was hindered by calf and knee injuries in 2009 and dealt with a sore elbow throughout the ’08 season.

Casilla broke into the big leagues with the A’s in 2004 as Jairo Garcia (see below), a hard-throwing righty out of the Dominican Republic with nasty stuff. Changing his name to Santiago Casilla in the 2006 season (he had used false documents when he first signed a contract with the Athletics in 2000) did not do much to improve his fortunes with the A’s.

Who knows, this might be one of those change of scenery moves where Casilla goes down to spring training in Scottsdale and is lights out. Or he might start the year in Phoenix and be a big call up to San Francisco in the summer when someone gets hurt. Or he could be awful. Either way moves like this are great to make because they don’t cost much and there is so much upside. Santiago Casilla: the player to be named later!